Starting in March 2017, she began serving in her father's presidential administration. She assumed this official, unpaid position[1] after ethics concerns were raised about her having access to classified material while not being held to the same restrictions as a federal employee.[4][5] She was considered part of the president's inner circle[6] even before becoming an official employee in his administration.

Trump attended the Chapin School in Manhattan until she was 15, when she transferred to Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut. She characterized Choate's "boarding-school life" as being like a "prison", while her "friends in New York were having fun".[14]

Career

Business

In 2007, she formed a partnership with a diamond vendor, Dynamic Diamond Corp., to create Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry, a line of diamond and gold jewelry, sold at her first flagship retail store in Manhattan.[20][21] In November 2011, her retail flagship moved from Madison Avenue to 109 Mercer Street, a larger space in the fashionable Soho district.[22][23]

On October 2, 2015, it was reported that "Ivanka Trump's flagship store on Mercer Street appear[s] to be closed" and, noting that the shop had been "stripped clean".[25] In October 2016, the only dedicated retail shop and flagship boutique for Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry is located at Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York City, with her brand also being available at Hudson's Bay and fine-jewelry stores throughout the U.S. and Canada, as well as in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.[26]

She also has her own line of Ivanka Trump fashion items, including clothes, handbags, shoes, and accessories, which is available in major U.S. and Canadian department stores, including, Macy's and Hudson's Bay.[27] Her brand was criticized for allegedly copying designs by other designers,[28][29] and by PETA and other animal rights activists for using fur from rabbits.[30][31] In 2016, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recalled "Ivanka Trump"-branded scarves because they did not meet federal flammability standards.[32][33] A 2016 analysis found that most of the fashion line was produced outside the U.S.[34] Ivanka Trump-brand shoes have been supplied by Chengdu Kameido Shoes in Sichuan and Hangzhou HS Fashion (via G-III Apparel Group) in Zhejiang.[35]

On February 9, 2017, Presidential Advisor Kellyanne Conway controversially encouraged Fox News viewers to purchase Trump's retail products.[37] In June 2017, three people with the organization called China Labor Watch were arrested by Chinese authorities while investigating Huajian International, which makes shoes for several American brands, including the Ivanka Trump brand. The Trump Administration has called for their release.[38][39]

On July 24, 2018, Ivanka Trump announced that she decided to shut down her company after deciding to pursue a career in public policy instead of returning to her fashion company.[40][41]

Modeling

Trump in July 2007

When Trump was attending boarding school as a teenager, she got into modeling "on weekends and holidays and absolutely not during the school year," according to her mother, Ivana Trump.[42] She was featured in print advertisements for Tommy Hilfiger and Sasson Jeans,[43][44] and walked fashion runways for Versace, Marc Bouwer and Thierry Mugler.[42] In May 1997, she was featured on the cover of Seventeen which ran a story on "celeb moms & daughters".[42]

Trump joined the Trump Organization in an executive position. Soon after that, she started her jewellery, shoe, and apparel lines, and she appeared in advertisements promoting the Trump Organization and her products. She was also featured in women's and special interest publications in "soft-hitting" profiles focusing on her "looks, lifestyles, and product lines", and featuring her on the cover of the same issue, like Harper's Bazaar, Forbes Life, Golf Magazine, Town & Country, and Vogue.[45][46]

She was featured on the cover of Stuff in August 2006 and again in September 2007.[47]

Political involvement and role in the Trump administration

2016 presidential campaign and election

Her father's 2016 presidential campaign was formally launched on June 16, 2015 at Trump Tower in New York City. In 2015, she publicly endorsed her father's presidential campaign. She was involved with her father's campaign by making public appearances in support of him[61] and defending him.[62][63] However, she admitted mixed feelings about his presidential ambitions, saying, in October 2015, "As a citizen, I love what he's doing. As a daughter, it's obviously more complicated."[64] In August 2015, Trump's father stated that she was his leading advisor on "women's health and women" and said it was she who propelled him to elaborate on his views of women.[65][66]

In January 2016, Trump was featured in a radio ad which aired in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, in which she praised her father.[67][68] She appeared by his side following the results of early voting states in 2016, in particular briefly speaking in South Carolina after being invited by her father to speak, thanking the state in doing so.[69][70] She was not able to vote for her father in the New York primary in April 2016 because she missed the October 2015 deadline to change her registration from independent to Republican.[71]

Trump introduced her father in a speech immediately before his own speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention (RNC) in July.[72] The George Harrison song "Here Comes the Sun" was used as her entrance music. She knew her father quite well and said: "One of my father's greatest talents is the ability to see the potential in people", and said her father will "Make America Great Again".[73] Her speech was well received as portraying her father "in a warmer-than-usual light", according to the Washington Post, though the article also referred to another Post article that had critiqued the speech.[74] The earlier Post article had questioned whether the policy positions Ivanka Trump espoused were closer to those of Hillary Clinton than to those of her father.[75] After the speech, the George Harrison estate complained about the use of his song as being offensive to their wishes.[76] The next morning, Ivanka's official Twitter account tweeted, "Shop Ivanka's look from her #RNC speech" with a link to a Macy's page that featured the dress she wore.[77]

After her father's election, Trump wore a bracelet on a family appearance with the president-elect on 60 Minutes. Her company then used an email blast to promote the appearance of the bracelet. After critiques for "monetization" the company quickly apologized, calling the publicity the work of "a well-intentioned marketing employee at one of our companies who was following customary protocol". A spokeswoman said that the company was, post-election, "proactively discussing new policies and procedures with all of our partners going forward".[78][79]

Ivanka Trump has collected the work of artists who have protested to her directly following her father's election victory. In January 2017, artist Richard Prince returned a $36,000 payment he received for a work featuring Ivanka and disavowed its creation.[80] Other artists joined behind a movement created by the Halt Action Group called @dear_ivanka, which aimed to change Trump's policies by appealing to Ivanka.[81] Among its supporters were contemporary artist Alex Da Corte who told Trump to stay away from his paintings after she appeared in front of one on a social media post.[82][81]

Advisor to the President of the United States

After Donald Trump's election, rumors swirled about the future role that Ivanka would play in her father's administration. In early 2017, she stepped down from her post at the Trump Organization; the organization also removed images of Trump and Donald Trump from their websites, in accordance with official advice on federal ethics rules.[83] In the early months of her father's presidency, some commented that she was filling a quasi-First Lady role[84] while First Lady Melania Trump remained in New York City (her son Barron completed the school year in New York before the First Lady moved to Washington);[84] Trump stated that she had no intention of being First Lady.[85][86]

Ivanka (4th from right) attending the signing ceremony for the INSPIRE Women Act on Tuesday, February 28, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House

After advising her father in an unofficial capacity for the first two months of his administration, she was appointed Advisor to the President, a government employee, on March 29, 2017. She takes no salary.[1] Prior to becoming a federal employee, she used a personal email for government work.[87]

Amid the contentious early months of her father's administration, some commentators compared her role in the administration to that of Julie Nixon Eisenhower, daughter of President Richard Nixon. While Julie was one of the Nixon administration's most vocal defenders, Trump also defended the Trump administration and her father personally against a myriad of allegations.[88][89]Washington Post opinion columnist Alyssa Rosenberg wrote, "Both daughters served as important validators for their fathers."[88]

In early April 2017, the government of China extended trademarks to Trump's businesses.[90] On the same day Donald Trump hosted Chinese PresidentXi Jinping at Mar-A-Lago and Trump and Kushner sat next to the Chinese leader and his wife[91]Peng Liyuan[92] at the state dinner.[93][94] Also during the visit, Trump and Kushner's five-year-old daughter Arabella "sang a traditional Chinese song, in Mandarin, [for Xi]. The video, which was lavishly praised by Chinese state media, played over 2.2 million times on China's popular news portal", Tencent QQ.[91]

In late April 2017, Trump hired Julie Radford as her chief of staff. Before the end of the month, Trump and Radford had plans to travel with Dina Powell and Hope Hicks to the first W20 women's summit. The W20 was organized by the National Council of German Women's Organizations and the Association of German Women Entrepreneurs[95][96] as one of the preparatory meetings leading up to the G20 head-of-state summit in July. At the conference, Trump spoke about women's rights; she was booed by the audience when she praised her father as an advocate for women.[97][98]

In a recent announcement, Donald Trump said that his daughter will lead the U.S. delegation to India this fall in a global support of women's entrepreneurship. In response to this announcement, an Indian diplomat was quoted as stating: "We regard Ivanka Trump the way we do half-wit Saudi princes. It's in our national interest to flatter them."[99]

Biographer and journalist Michael Wolff wrote a book that is based on numerous interviews with members of Donald Trump's circle. In an extract of this book, Wolff claims—but cites no sources—that Trump and her husband have reached a deal that "[i]f sometime in the future the opportunity arose, she'd be the one to run for president".[100]

She has also received criticism on Twitter for acting as Secretary of State after the firing of Rex Tillerson by meeting with the South Korean foreign minister.[101]

Philanthropy

Trump has ties to a number of Jewish charities, including Chai Lifeline, a charity which helps to look after children with cancer.[107] Other charities she supports include United Hatzalah, to which her father, Donald Trump, has made six-figure donations in the past.[108][109]

After she was appointed Advisor to the President, Trump donated the unpaid half of the advance payments for her book Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success to the National Urban League and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. She further said that any royalties exceeding the advances will also be given to charity.[58]

Personal life

In January 2017, it was announced that Trump and her husband had made arrangements to establish a family home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, DC.[110] Federal filings implied that, in 2017, Trump and her husband may have assets upwards of $740 million.[111]

According to her mother, Ivanka Trump speaks French and understands Czech.[112]

Family siblings

Sarah Ellison writing for Vanity Fair in 2018 indicated that Ivanka Trump was the family member whom "everyone in the family seems to acknowledge" is Donald Trump's "favorite" child.[113] This was previously confirmed by the family members themselves in an interview with Barbara Walters on network television from 2015 where the siblings were gathered together and acknowledged that she was the favorite among the siblings.[114]

In 2005, she started dating real estate developer Jared Kushner, whom she met through mutual friends.[117][118] The couple broke up in 2008 due to the objections of Kushner's parents,[117] but they got back together and married in a Jewish ceremony on October 25, 2009.[117][119] They have three children, a daughter and two sons, born in 2011 and later.[120] In an interview on The Dr. Oz Show, Trump revealed that she had suffered from postpartum depression after each of her pregnancies.[121]

Trump has a close relationship with her father, who has publicly expressed his admiration for her on several occasions.[122][123] Ivanka has likewise praised her father, complimenting his leadership skills and saying he empowers other people.[124]

Religion

Trump was raised as a Presbyterian Christian.[125] She converted to Orthodox Judaism in July 2009,[126][127] after studying with Elie Weinstock from the Modern OrthodoxRamaz School.[128] Trump took the Hebrew name "Yael".[129][130] She describes her conversion as an "amazing and beautiful journey" which her father supported "from day one", adding that he has "tremendous respect" for the Jewish religion.[106] She attests to keeping a kosher diet and observing the Jewish Sabbath, saying in 2015: "We're pretty observant... It's been such a great life decision for me... I really find that with Judaism, it creates an amazing blueprint for family connectivity. From Friday to Saturday we don't do anything but hang out with one another. We don't make phone calls."[131] When living in New York City, Trump used to send her daughter to kindergarten at a Jewish school. She said: "It's such a blessing for me to have her come home every night and share with me the Hebrew that she's learned and sing songs for me around the holidays."[106]